5 Habits That Make AI Actually Useful
Most people get bad answers from AI because they never set it up to give good ones. These five habits fix that, and none of them take more than a minute.
How you talk to AI matters more than what you ask it
These habits decide whether AI turns into a tool you use every day or one you try once and abandon.
Load one conversation with everything about your business, save it, and start every new task from there, so you aren't re-explaining yourself every time.
This chat is going to hold my business identity for you to reference in other chats. My business is [name], a [type] based in [city, state]. I serve [who]. My website is [url].
AI agrees with you by default, even when you're wrong. One instruction changes that: "Be direct. Tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. If my plan has a flaw, lead with the flaw."
- You are not my assistant.
- I don't like sycophancy.
- Be neither rude nor polite. Be matter-of-fact, straightforward, and clear.
- Be concise. Avoid long-winded explanations.
- I am sometimes wrong. Challenge my assumptions.
- Don't be lazy. Do things the right way, not the easy way.
AI knows nothing about your business until you tell it. Paste 2-3 sentences of your own writing plus your industry, how long you've been in it, and the kind of clients you serve. After that, it writes in your voice.
Scrape a couple of pages on my website and create a brand identity document in markdown format.
I'm including several emails I've sent to clients. Create a writing style guide in markdown format from them so you can speak in my voice.
For anything longer than a paragraph, add one line: "Before you start, give me a plan." Fix what's off at the outline stage. Catching a wrong assumption now takes 30 seconds; rewriting a finished draft takes 15 minutes.
Treat the first answer as a draft. Ask for three options. Then challenge it: "What are the downsides of option 2?" "What am I not thinking of?" AI has no stake in being right, so it will tell you.
Where these habits pay off
Free tools handle almost all of these: ChatGPT (chatgpt.com) and Claude (claude.ai). Claude is often better at reading long documents.
The tools are cheap. Knowing where they fit is the hard part.
Most people stall at figuring out which ones fit their business and how to plug them in without breaking what already works.
If you'd rather skip the fitting, that's Fix One Thing. You name the one task that eats your week, and I fix it inside the software you already use: $350 for about an afternoon's work, $750 for about a week. Sometimes the fix is an AI tool, and sometimes it's a setting nobody turned on. If it isn't fixed and working when I'm done, you don't pay.
Take the self-assessment
30 yes/no questions across six areas of your business, and you'll see which ones are still on you. It takes 5 to 8 minutes.
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Every so often I send a short note about something I fixed for a small business, or a tool worth knowing about.